Accidental Apologies

Q: I think our 12-year-old son may be jealous over a girl classmate’s desire to be around one of his friends. In the classroom, she wants to be his partner or in the group with my son’s friend. I don't think my son “likes” her because he finds girls very annoying right now, and his behavior supports it.

On the playground, she wants to play football with the boys, but ends up standing in the middle and doing nothing. The playground teacher makes the boys throw every third pass to the two girls, while there can be 15 boys. My son threw a football to a friend, whose fingertips it went off and hit the girl in the face. We were told our son said, “That’s what happens to ugly girls.” Later, our son told us that he didn’t say that, only that he thought of her as a “teacher’s pet.”

I meet with her parents, teacher, and children tomorrow at school, probably with the principal and school counselor, too. What can I do to help our son? I want to be supportive, of course, to our son, even if he's made some unwise choices. I want to give him some tools to deal with others’ comments about himself. He's dyslexic, so there's a confidence issue with schooling.

A. My initial thought is this is building a mountain out of molehill, but I suspect you probably didn't have a choice in regard to school meeting. Whether or not your son likes the girl is not relevant to this situation. Likewise is the fact that he may or may not be jealous.

Those are clouding the issue and should be avoided because the “why” something happened is not nearly as important as the “what” happened. This is contrary to a lot of talk today by professionals, so be prepared to stick to the “what happened” in the meeting and steer away as much as possible from the “why did this happen” discussion (and it's near cousin, the why did he do that or why did she react that way).

The best way you can help your son is to ensure he takes responsibility for his actions. He hit the girl with the football and said something not nice to her (true or not, others think he did, so he should own it. Yes, it's not fair, but frankly, it's how life is sometimes).

Come up with what you would have him do to make amends. I’d recommend a verbal apology to the girl, plus having him hand-write in legible script a longer, formal letter of apology to the girl. Bring the letter to the meeting. If this is an out-of-the-blue type of situation, that might be enough of a consequence, as he’s likely to be extremely embarrassed by having to do those two apologies.

If you think this might be a pattern, then level home consequences for his actions, too, i.e., some sort of meaningful restriction, like removing electronics and/or limiting his interaction with the outside world for a time--in other words, make it matter a whole lot to him, not something token. Implement said restriction immediately.

In the near future (once this has had a few days to settle down), you can talk with him in brief spurts (or have your husband do so) about walking away from situations where he feels his self control loosening, about counting to 30 in his head, about replacing mean thoughts about a person with positive or affirming ones, etc. I have a daughter who I work with on occasion on this issue, as she tends to flare up like a tornado when she's frustrated, and it does help to remind her what to do when she feels that way--but only when she's not feeling that way. Avoid over-lecturing, though. Say what you want to say in as few words as possible, then stop talking:) That will sink in more than a long discussion.

One final thought: his dyslexia has nothing to do with his actions, so I'd keep that out of the discussion here as it will only muddy the waters.

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